1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to network and transport layer addressing of packets over the Internet and more particularly to techniques for obscuring packet addresses to achieve anonymity and to protect against network attacks.
2. Background Description
The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) was developed as a solution to the rapidly depleting Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address space. Addresses were expected to deplete so quickly that the White House issued a mandate directing all government agencies to transition their backbones to IPv6 by Jun. 30, 2008. Technologies such as Network Address Translation (NAT) allow multiple users to share a single public IPv4 address and have staved off the need for immediate transition. Yet, many of the IPv4 address space expansion mechanisms such as NAT are incompatible with emerging technologies. Two full years after the initial 2008 deadline, the Internet community once again finds itself facing the threat of an Internet Protocol (IP) address shortage. Despite its impending deployment, a large portion of the community is still unfamiliar with IPv6. A brief overview of some of the main features of IPv6 follows, together with some background on how addresses are determined in IPv6.